Rant: Gmail Contacts

It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to have a good ol’ rant in on tech!

I use Gmail in the browser, like my friend James. It’s meant to be used there. I’ll use it there. But I often get emailed new contact information, and I want to add it to Google Contacts. Here’s the workflow.

I open the email and click on the ‘add contact’ button.

There’s often no response at this point. The page sits there and I don’t see anything telling me to go to another page. Eventually the browser takes me to a new page in the same screen where I now have a new contact group with the name “Imported DATE” and one user (or possibly two if I clicked, saw no response, and clicked again):

At this point, I have to click the find and merge to get them back down to one. Then I click what groups I want the new user to be in. Of note, you must press the “Apply” button:

No ajax here.

But what about that group?

Now some of this I can do from the list user screen, but I still have to go to contacts, mess with it, and then delete the temp group. No ajax. No way to add just from within mail. No way to open in a new window.

It’s just crap.